


Cage Within a Cage

by Sjukdom



Series: Distortion [2]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 22:11:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10931037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sjukdom/pseuds/Sjukdom
Summary: A piece based on the scene in 3x18.





	Cage Within a Cage

Ed felt the rods of his cage, hard, cold and rusty as he leaned back, sitting on the floor, holding his legs tight with his hands, his chin resting on his knees. He felt the rods with his every spinal bone and knew that soon it would begin to hurt and after a while he would be unable to stand up without wincing from the numbness and the dull pain in his back. But he was so sleepy he didn't really care. His eyelids were impossible to open and it felt only natural, the most natural thing in the world, as if he was born to live with his eyes closed, wandering through the world painted black.

Edward lowered his head onto his knees, burying his nose in the folds of grey fabric, his glasses crackling threateningly. His back was already beginning to complain, the pain crawling up and down his spine. Surely he would wake up with bruises stretched upon his skin, long and blue and violet and then yellow, an addition to those he already had. He didn't mind at all, drifting away. Perhaps he should lie down on the floor, though. Cuddle up and tuck his hands under his head, that would be much more comfortable and much warmer. The air here was damp and heavy like an invisible wet cloth. 

Ed stretched out his legs a bit, ready to change his sleeping position. Why hadn't he done it before, why had he slept leaning on the damn cage rods and woken up from the nightmarish semi-dreams with his whole body sore and hurt? Was he afraid of pins and needles sensation in his hands after he would so cosily tuck them under his tired head? 

No, it didn't make sense at all. Ed stretched his legs further, enjoying the sensation of relaxing them a bit at last. He could even lie down on his back and stretch out his arms, too, bring this wonderful feeling of relaxation to his shoulders and his shoulder blades and his poor wounded back. The tip of his shoe now almost touched the other side of the cage. Ed began to dream and in his dream something was reaching out of the darkness behind his cage, something that looked like a thin grey spider at first. But then he looked closer through his still closed eyelids that were almost transparent, with a pattern of red blood vessels upon this transparency and he saw that it was a hand. Stripped almost naked of the flesh and the grey dead skin, with bony fingers and black nails, dirty water covering it like a glove, the hand crawled towards his left foot that he so recklessly allowed to be too close to this side of the cage. 

Semi-dreaming, semi-conscious Ed realized this was the reason he couldn't lie down properly and needed to sit hugging his knees, his cage biting into his flesh as if it wanted to force its way inside him and turn his own body into another cage. The image of the rusty metal rods punctuating his flesh and sticking out of his mouth and chest and between his ribs and from his belly flashed in front of his transparent eyelids and was gone as the slimy dead hand of a drowned man finally caught his foot in a stone-cold, bone-crushing grip.

Ed woke up with a choking gasp and flinched blindly, hitting the back of his head on the metal rods, his body that had also gone to sleep waking up after him in its full painful glance. He was panting, not sure if he had opened his eyes or not for there was only darkness around. Hastily Ed resumed his sitting position, feeling dizzy and disoriented because of the pain in his head. Apparently he hit it so hard there were tears in his eyes. Ed blinked them away and they rolled down his neck and chest. They burned like wax.

When he was able to see properly, he realized there was no hand grabbing him from the cage next to his own. He thought that perhaps the cage was empty again but then he met the stare of the man inside it. Oswald was lying on the floor in the fetal position Ed so longed for and stared at him with unblinking eyes. His hands, white hands of a living human being were tucked under his head. If he had really tried to grab his foot he had been quick enough to hide that. 

For some vague reason Ed waited that Oswald would ask him something like “Bad dreams, huh?”. That was really naive considering the fact that Oswald hadn't said a word to him since he arrived there. He kept silent, staring and staring at him with the eyes like two crystallized pieces of black matter, occasionally trying to reach him with his hands when Ed was carelessly close to his side of the cage. It was as if Oswald didn't sleep at all, carrying out his never-ending silent watch, because every time Ed looked in his direction he met his eyes focused on him and only on him.

That was the true reason of his most uncomfortable sleeping position and of his horrible semi-dreams. Ed had no idea what would happen if Oswald finally manages to get him. He knew only that he couldn't predict at all the outcome of it. He wasn't afraid of Oswald as much as of himself. He shot Oswald. He missed him. He missed him so badly he did drugs to see him again, hold him again, argue with him again and do things that were not entirely “again”, but “for the first time”. 

And all this time Oswald had been alive somewhere. He could still remember the touch of the imaginary Oswald, born from his drugged subconscious. He couldn't dare to face the touch of the real one. This would break the cage he had built around his memories about Oswald and everything that had been kept there, all the shameful and sticky things included, would be let loose, displayed and made visible not only to him, but also to Oswald.

The thought made him nauseous and Ed tasted bile in his mouth. It was hard to swallow.

Oswald was watching him with the blank expression on his face. 

His head hurt like never before. 

“I had a bad dream”, declared Ed in a husky voice. There was no answer. The dungeon they were locked in seemed like a vacuum. It devoured every sound and regurgitated it as dead silence. There was some light but it never lit the place. There was no way to tell whether it was day or night outside so there was no time here. Being locked inside the cage and having not enough light to see anything made it impossible to measure how big the dungeon was, so there was no space too. Experiencing this kind of deprivation, Ed had found the smallest piece of comfort in his sleep that for now he had also been deprived of. 

He wanted at least his sleep back so badly he could squirm and cry. He even vaguely remembered asking Oswald not to touch him and let him sleep instead, but he had no idea whether it was in his semi-dream or in the reality. Oswald said nothing in return anyway.

Ed imagined himself sitting here until the lack of sleep would drive him insane. He imagined this cage to be his last place to stay. He imagined that there was no escape from it, from the twisted day-dreams about horrors and misery.

He imagined that the hardest to escape was the cage within, the cage he had built himself.

Ed blinked again and the quick movement sent the drilling pain across his skull. He didn't know how long had he been sitting like that. His last words to Oswald still echoed around, there was nothing better to fill this swamp of silence with. Soon they would be gone again. This place sucked in everything that got there. He imagined being in this cage for another day, another hour or another minute, the cage inside clanking and threatening to open all by itself, presenting the things inside to this greedy emptiness.

Oswald watched Edward as he carefully, swaying like a drunk crawled towards the other side of the cage. He didn't move. Ed leaned forward and clumsily forced his shaking hands through the cage. His nails scratched the floor. In a couple of helpless grabs he finally reached for Oswald. The tips of Edward's fingers touched his chest.

He smiled and let his body relax, more feeling that actually hearing Oswald's quickened heartbeat.

And the cage opened.


End file.
